In this installment
Bostock
French Roast Coffee
Bostock
Bostock shares some similarities with French toast; it was created as a way to use up leftover bread. In the 1930s, French bakeries began transforming their day-old brioche into this decadent orange and almond-flavored pastry. Funny enough, given Bostock’s humble beginnings and relatively simple preparation method, you’ll be more likely to find it in upscale Parisian patisseries like Pierre Hermé and Ladurée, than at the average French corner bakery. Lucky for you, though, Amy couldn’t get the pastry out of her head after a trip to Paris, so you can find it every day, right here at the Bakehouse. Our bakers begin with a thick slice of our rich, buttery brioche bread, brush it with orange-flavored simple syrup, spread it with almond frangipane, sprinkle it with toasted almonds and, and bake it. They then finish it off with a dusting of powdered sugar! Trust us, it’s totally worth getting out of bed for.
French Roast Coffee
Roastmaster Steve uses only high-grown central American coffee beans for our French Roast. The common mistake made when producing a French Roast is over roasting, which causes the natural oils in the beans to take over the flavor and forsake any nuances or complexity they might possess. Oils can go rancid, taste sour and leave you with the sense that you just drank a cup of steeped charcoal. That’s why other roasters use the cheapest beans they can find and roast the heck out of ‘em. Quick, cheap and easy but not that interesting of a coffee.
Steve, of course, bucks the trend. He stops just short of “dark” when roasting, leaving the beans with a high acid content but only slightly oily. The result is a robust, rich cup of coffee accented by a stout liveliness that will start your morning off on the right foot.
5 Things to Do to Brew Yourself Better Tasting Coffee
Pretty much everyone professes a desire to drink better coffee. Of course what constitutes “better” isn’t the same thing for everyone. For me a great coffee is complex. It’s well balanced. It’s got a nice nose and nice finish. Bad coffee? Again, it’s a personal thing, but to me bad coffee is usually thin textured, watery, flat-tasting, and frequently overwhelmed by off flavors like excessive sourness, a burned flavor, paperiness, etc.
Aside from educating my palate with tasting after tasting, probably the biggest single thing I’ve learned from it all is just how much the same exact beans can taste totally different depending on how they’re handled. Basically, brewed coffee quality can be very, very variable. It’s become ever clearer to me that even the most carefully sourced and roasted coffee beans can only get you a small way to where you want to go on your quest for quality. The grind, the water, the method, the age of the beans, the volume of ground coffee used…it’s not a simple thing.
That said, here are the things I’ve learned that any of us can do to radically increase the odds of consuming a better cup of coffee at home.
1. Buy Better Beans
I will tell you truthfully and with great confidence that there is a really big difference between great coffee beans and so-so stuff. I am very confident that even the biggest skeptic really can tell the difference pretty darned quickly if they just decide that they want to. This is where all of our head roastmaster Steve’s homework has paid off with connections to the most quality-conscious brokers in the US, enabling us to get hold of some really special green beans.
2. Use Enough Coffee
As simple as it seems, this really could be the single biggest offending action at issue in the world of home brewing. The generally recommended ratio is two tablespoons of ground beans per six-ounce cup. Even if you like weaker coffee you’re better off to brew at that ratio and then add hot water to thin your cup. My partner Paul puts three coffee scoops of whole beans into his grinder for each 8-ounce cup of water he’s using. If you’re calculating pounds in decimals, as I like to do, it’s about .45 ounces for an 8-ounce cup. I’m sorry for all the confusion but it’s become clear to me that part of the problem is that everyone is using different measurements and, consequently, ending up with really variable coffee quality even if they start with the same exact beans.
3. Store the Coffee Well
That would mean in an airtight glass jar. Probably at room temperature, and stored in a dry cabinet where it’s away from the light, for no more than a week after you get it home. Although there are those who like to keep the coffee in the freezer, most folks I’ve talked to of late have given up on the idea; there is little to be gained and you run the risk of causing condensation inside the jar which will ruin your brew.
4. Grind Right
Your best bet is to buy a good grinder and grind at home right before you brew. My personal choice right now is to use one of the old-fashioned hand held German coffee mills that we’ve gotten hold of—they’re quieter, they look good, they’ve got a really great set of perfectly tooled gears inside. They don’t heat the beans in the least. They’re incredibly easy to use. And they’ve got a ten-year warranty on ‘em. For more on these old fashioned—yet marvelously modern when it comes to the actual grinding mechanism—check them out online.
If you want to stick with electronically powered machines, the best I think are the burr grinders. Like the old-fashioned hand driven mills above, these actually grind the coffee (as opposed to the chopping action you get from the ones with those little whirring blades). Whatever grinding method you might use, keep in mind the amount of time it takes to grind. A fifteen count is about right. Once you’re happy with the timing, the burr grinders give you the option of presetting the timing so that you get a higher level of consistency. If you’re using the blade style, stop a couple times to shake the beans so you get even grinding. Too fine will lead to bitterness. Too course and you lose flavor.
5. Better Water
Since nearly all of what we actually end up with in our cup is water, not coffee, it’s kind of clear that the better the water we use, the better tasting the brew will be. Filtered water will help a great deal—you may not recognize your current coffee purchases if you switch from tap water to filtered (I will say though that if you’ve become accustomed to tap water you may not like the “cleaner” taste of coffee brewed with filtered water when you first try it). Regardless it should be clean and cold. And be careful not to ever overboil.
Used in combination, these five seemingly simple, yet sometimes challenging to stick to, steps really will help you pave the way for brewing better coffee at home. Once you have them in place, the next step is to actually put them to work together to make yourself a really great tasting cup of coffee.